...They Scream...




He cooked lobster 

almost every night. 


Sometimes two or three. 


Mind you, he never ate any of it. 


Nah, he just liked 

throwin’ ‘em live 


into the boiling water. 


It was a thrill-of-the-kill thing. 


Kinda made him feel human. 


Sorta reinforced the known fact that 

they, 
the lobsters, 


were part of the animal kingdom 


and he was Man. 


Totally above them. 


Totally separate. 


Course, 

it would be great to be able to 


go out and shoot things. 


Just to be able to indiscriminately 

step outside and 

blast assorted creatures. 


But,  (sigh) 


he lived in the city, 

and people were 

sensitive to that shit. 




What with laws becoming 

the way they were, 


how was a man supposed to 

remain a man anymore? 


Where was his urban right-of-passage? 


What the heck was a fella to do 

with an over-abundance of 

testosteronal uber-juice?


It wasn’t like he was being 

sent out with a spear into 

the vast Serengeti veldt, 


ready to go mano y mano…

er mano y animano 


with some multi toothed beast. 


Course he had almost had an encounter with 


Mrs. Swartz’s Pekinese at the end of the hall, 

but then… 


social etiquette came crushingly 

back to the equation, so… 


there he was, one man
armed 

with a large stainless steel pot. 


One man, face to face with 
a 

vaguely peeved aquatic crustacean. 


There on one side of the stove stood he, 


a man representing the entire human race. 


Pitch-hitting for the animal world 


(and a bargain at eighteen dollars 

and ninety five cents) 


was the lobster. 


Right-of-passage? 


Heck, tonight he was going to be daring. 


Tonight, he was going to be a real man. 


Tonight, before dropped that lobster 


into the deadly boiling water, 


he was gonna take the rubber bands 

off its snappy 

pinchy things. 


Well…     maybe. 


©02 Jack David Hubbell